Welcome to my
Bob Dylan™ Musical Roots
and Influences Blog
(a previous incarnation was bobdylanroots.com)
of Manfred Helfert, Mainz, Germany.
Any copyrighted items are included here for "nonprofit educational purposes" (one of the criteria of "fair use", Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107). Most audio recordings linked to (but not hosted) in this blog are believed to be either uncopyrighted or to have lapsed into Public Domain in the EU where this blog originates.

On Bob Dylans' 70th Birthday, Clare English revisits one of the the most controversial eras of his career: The Gospel Years. His evangelical Christian compositions were a critical disaster at the time of release, causing anger and confusion amongst critics, fans and peers, but did they get it wrong?

With historical insights and reflections on Dylan's gospel period provided by Bob Dylan's musicians, biographers, critics and friends, we re-examine this baffling but beguiling episode in rock history.

Bob Dylan, America's most celebrated musician, turned 70 on 24 May 2011. It's now 50 years since the young Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman in Hibbing, Minnesota, hitch-hiked to New York with his guitar and a dream to make it as a singer. He landed in the Greenwich Village folk music scene and thanks largely to an astonishing ability to churn out songs that captured the feeling of the times - which as he told us were a-changin' - quickly became a star. His career has continued unabated - his most recent album two years ago topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and in April 2011 he wound up an Asian tour with a concert in Auckland. One of the first to take the young Dylan under his wing was Izzy Young, who ran the Folklore Centre in Greenwich Village. Izzy Young, who now lives in Sweden, told Morning Report's Simon Mercep how Bob Dylan made the store his second home.

Suze Rotolo has been described as the '60s muse of Bob Dylan, the girl behind some of his most moving love songs and rousing political statements. The two met in the early 1960s in New York, and fell in love. She was a "red diaper baby," born to Communist sympathizers in the McCarthy era. She was living a politically active life in bohemian Greenwich Village when she met Dylan at a concert. Dylan described it as love at first sight, and the two soon became romantically involved. Though the relationship didn't last, it inspired song after legendary song from the folk icon.Rotolo died just this past February from lung cancer. In this interview with Rotolo, recorded in 2008, she and World Cafe host David Dye discuss her book, A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. She describes what it was like to be that girl on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan — the pressures, the mutual inspirations, the forces that pushed them apart, and her life afterwards as an author, artist and activist. Rotolo remained passionately involved in politics throughout her life, and there's little doubt that this passion deeply influenced Dylan in their time together. Her admirable passion lives on in songs known the world over.